A Place To Unwind

January 20, 2002|By Todd Anthony Film Writer

Things change rapidly in South Florida. In fact, they transform so suddenly and so often that change itself feels like a constant.

But even that notion changes when anything -- particularly a homegrown cultural event or organization -- manages to hold its own for a few years. We start to view it as a bastion of permanence, an institution.

We don't want it to change.

Take the Miami Film Festival, for example. Launched in 1983 by a handful of local cinema buffs, the event teetered on the verge of insolvency for most of its life, yet somehow carved out a niche amid the shifting sands of our cultural landscape.

For 18 years, it celebrated the celluloid art and brought great films and filmmakers to Miami. And for 18 years the same man ran the show: Nat Chediak.

Florida International University signed on in 1999, bringing financial stability and a desire to take the smallish regional event "to the next level." FIU added its initials to the title, but kept Chediak on board to oversee the creative end of things. Everyone rested easy; they'd changed the name but they hadn't changed the character of the event. The newly christened FIU Miami Film Festival was still Nat's baby.

Until last summer. Following a dispute over the direction of the festival, Chediak abruptly severed his ties with FIU and the labor of love that had dominated his life for nearly two decades. Long-time patrons were stunned; to many, Chediak's name had become almost synonymous with the Miami Film Festival.

Bam! Change.

In Chediak's place stands new director David Poland, 37, a former Hollywood script doctor, Entertainment Weekly correspondent and acerbic movie industry observer. He is well aware that he has a tough act to follow, and he isn't afraid to buck the status quo as the 19th annual FIU Miami Film Festival commences Thursday. "Everybody tells me how Miami is and how Miami isn't," Poland says with some heat. "They say `documentaries don't play in Miami.' Well, there are millions of people here. Maybe they just haven't had the opportunity."

Poland contends that the film festival audience doesn't consist of "people who come because they got sold out of the 10 p.m. screening of A Beautiful Mind. They have open minds. It's our duty to give them something interesting and different."

The real stuff

True to his word, this year's festival includes 12 documentaries, more than twice the number of nonfiction films shown at any previous MFF.

There are documentaries about the effect of a murder on a family and the community in which they live (Asesinato en Febrero). There are documentaries about the colorful folks who walk some of New York's estimated million-plus pooches (Dog Soldiers -- not to be confused with the exhilarating skateboard saga Dogtown & Z Boys, another doc).

There's Raw Deal: A Question of Consent, one of last year's Sundance sensations, produced and directed by South Florida's own Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman (an FIU alumnus). "I consider it one of the most important documentaries in at least a decade," Poland says. The picture, which investigates a stripper's charges of being raped during a rowdy fraternity party in Gainesville, includes graphic video footage shot by two frat brothers who were present. It was the first screening to sell out.

No Miami Film Festival is complete without at least one documentary about some aspect of life in Cuba; this year's fest contains three. In Cuba mia, director Rhonda Mitrani walks the island with four Jewish couples intent upon retracing their pasts. In a somewhat similar vein, filmmaker Ruth Behar returns to Cuba in Adio kerida to piece together the story of her parents, a Sephardic Jew and an Ashkenazic Jew. La Tropical revisits the famous Havana nightspot.

In Poland's view, the "one that got away" -- the big film he couldn't find a way to include -- was another Cuban documentary with a self-explanatory title, Fidel. Sensitive to the area's rabid anti-Castro bias, Poland says he "felt we needed to have a dialogue about it before opening. It's a piece of pro-Fidel propaganda; if the other side is putting out propaganda, you should be aware of it. But I didn't want the whole festival to be about just THAT film."

When he ran out of time to set up the "dialogue" with local media and community leaders, Poland abandoned the idea. And you could probably hear FIU's sigh of relief all the way down along the MalecM-sn.

Hitting the beach

Poland doesn't arrive at his job with a reputation for timidity. He achieved a measure of renown for his shoot-from-the-hip column The Hot Button, which ran for four years on Turner Network Television's entertainment Web site, roughcut.com. (The site was dissolved last February in the wake of the AOL/Time-Warner merger.)

The new boss brings to the film festival extensive media connections (crucial for raising MFF's national and international profiles), a passion for movies and a vision consistent with FIU's desire to develop the Miami Film Festival into a "destination event."